Creative Problem Session for Identifying & Filling Gaps in Supporting Early Student Innovators

How can we develop meaningful connections with student entrepreneurs and ensure effective programming? Participants will be led on a journey using the Creative Problem Solving process centered around the identification of missing pieces or hurdles from workshop participants’’ university entrepreneurship and innovation programs that, if implemented, would generate more student participation, and an increase in successful technologies and startups from their programs. We have used this process, which led us to develop offerings centered around sustained, personalized, intimate relationships between student entrepreneurs and those who support them: other student entrepreneurs, alumni and mentor entrepreneurs, and faculty/staff/organizational infrastructure builders. We hope that sharing the perspectives and challenges being faced by different institutions can be leveraged to raise the bar for all. After this highly interactive session, we expect participants to take away actionable solutions for addressing the needs of their student entrepreneurs and early stage innovators.

Alex Zorychta, University of Virginia
Elizabeth P. Pyle, University of Virginia

Track: Early Stage Innovators